Panjoust - A New Simple Platformer

[mduffor]

For more oriental looking mountains, I'd suggest making them more rounded than craggy, like what you would see in a Sumi-e ink painting. The type of mountains you drew do exist in the orient of course, but the rounded ones are more stylistically associated with Japan and China.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[MarkoeZ]

Well, no clue about jagged or rounded orient mountains. But for Amigo Bandito: a small techdemo of the new clouds is online. CLoud speeds and positioning will be random, but i thought you'd like a preview anyway.
New youtube vid
for the rest: There are different clouds for allmost every levelset, but not showing everything yet

 

[Masterfurbix]

In all honesty, the more I do on this set, the less oriental they feel, and the more jungle they feel

I think I'll keep this set as a jungle one and make another one later for oriental, give it a lot more browns, ochres and deep purples to look more like traditional inking like mduffor suggested.
EDIT:

Okay, I'm just going to make one more close mountain and one more mid-depth mountain and we'll call this set a done deal

Opinions?

The color of the background mountains has changed somewhat, it's not as blue as it appears in the jpeg

Also remember that when you play on the pandora, everything will be the same resolution, but it will be physically smaller, so the scanlines on the mountains in the back will not be at all apparent.

 

[fusion_power]

Well, no clue about jagged or rounded orient mountains. But for Amigo Bandito: a small techdemo of the new clouds is online. CLoud speeds and positioning will be random, but i thought you'd like a preview anyway.
New youtube vid
for the rest: There are different clouds for allmost every levelset, but not showing everything yet

I think, the clouds are to "dense". This is no problem in front of the bright Sky but it looks completely wrong in front of the dark Mountains.
So make them semi-transparent or put them behind the first Mountain layer or above. Semi-Transparent would be looking great but I know that real transparency on SDL and ARM is always a huge performance loss. You can try a 8-bit "chessboard" pattern for the clouds with simple transparency every 2. Pixel but I think this will not look good enough with the rest of the graphics.
Just my opinion. ^^""""

@Amigo: with "oriental" do you actualy mean "asian" so in the way of chinese Mountains? For me, "orient" is more like India and so on. Sorry if I mussinterpreted the style.
Anyway, it looks very nice. Maybe flat the sharp top of the foreground mountain a little bit but overall it fits.
EDIT: You did the last line of Mountains "scanlined" because this way it looks like the clouds are in front of these Mountains? Clever Idea. I really would like to see all these effects onto the real Pandora screen as soon as possible.

 

[Masterfurbix]

I don't know, I kinda like the look of the clouds, it's very... cartoony?

I think it fits well with the whole watercolor look

as for whether or not it's oriental, jungle, island, bananaland or whatever, we don't really have to name them anyway

As long as we have them, and they're in-game, it's all good with me.

EDIT: I would drag my nose through a mile of broken glass just to hear someone playing a pandora through a walkie-talkie.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Clouds: I think they look pretty good as well. Starting with the clouds, i've added a new value to the objects: scenedepth. I'm going to implement it in everything, including backgrounds, obstacles, etc. That way some clouds will also move behind mountains, and maybe even some in front of the hero in later levels.
Also every levelset has their own cloudset, the others are not this white.
Amigo: That being said: We could try making the clouds in that level just SLIGHTLY less white. Or maybe some checkerboardish transparency along the top of the cloud.

The Oriental/Jungle level: Given that Amigo Bandito thinks the graphics are more jungle-ish, and the music by Nick May also has a pretty heavy jungle beat, I think Jungle is the way to go for this one.
BUT a jungle level should probably be a bit higher (position of the bird lower). One more background layer with less mountains and more general jungly things would probably do it. Not sure i'f im making myself clear, but more jungle and less sky is the idea. BUT KEEP THE WATERFALL MOUNTAIN!! me like.

I have also received an Egytian themed song from Nick May, so Amigo, if you are bored?

EDIT: I would drag my nose through a mile of broken glass just to hear someone playing a pandora through a walkie-talkie.

Not sure what to think of that one

Cheers!

MarkoeZ

 

[Tempel]

So make them semi-transparent or put them behind the first Mountain layer or above. Semi-Transparent would be looking great but I know that real transparency on SDL and ARM is always a huge performance loss. You can try a 8-bit "chessboard" pattern for the clouds with simple transparency every 2.

That's not entirely accurate. SDL is slow with per-pixel alpha, ie: when each pixel on a surface has its own transparency (so, when using GIFs or PNGs with alpha channels). However, SDL works just fine when a whole surface is given an alpha value. You use standard image files with no alpha channel, then have the software apply overall transparency.

Just want to make sure Markoe doesn't pass up any potentially useful technology.

 

[Masterfurbix]

I assure you, I am anything BUT bored. the school year is dragging to a close and I have more term papers to write than you could shake a stick at.

I am splitting my free time between video games and developing already, and I'm splitting that time between Panjoust and another project I have going on the side, so my productivity is just above zero in terms of work completed.

I have done some of the easy junk for the egyptian level, I've selected a color palette and a time of day.

it will be sunrise with a lot of pinks and blues.

As for your comment about height, I understand completely. A layer of trees in front of the closest mountain will work for that purpose perfectly.

 

[fusion_power]

SDL is slow with per-pixel alpha, ie: when each pixel on a surface has its own transparency (so, when using GIFs or PNGs with alpha channels). However, SDL works just fine when a whole surface is given an alpha value. You use standard image files with no alpha channel, then have the software apply overall transparency.

Maybe hardware-accelerated SDL will solve the last performance problems that could be still exist.

As for your comment about height, I understand completely. A layer of trees in front of the closest mountain will work for that purpose perfectly.

This was also the first thing I thought when I've seen your Jungle/Oriental BG. A Tree(top) layer (or 2 or 3 XD ) in the foreground would fit perfectly.

Oh, for the desert Sky, is it possible to animate the sun a little bit in the way of "shimmering" because of the hot desert air?

 

[Masterfurbix]

I gave it a try, I made a 4 frame GIF to cover the sun with a small zig-zag filter. it looks okay on its own, but I'm not sure how it will work together with the level.


http://www.mediafire.com/file/jmowmjftmkj/Test.exe

You can hit up and down on your arrow keys to change the image speed. it will probably shrink to fit your screen, sorry about that.

 

[fusion_power]

I gave it a try, I made a 4 frame GIF to cover the sun with a small zig-zag filter. it looks okay on its own, but I'm not sure how it will work together with the level.


http://www.mediafire.com/file/jmowmjftmkj/Test.exe

You can hit up and down on your arrow keys to change the image speed. it will probably shrink to fit your screen, sorry about that.

I think the "wobble curve" is to big. I wish I had a gif animation program but I did some Photoshop Mockup. Just 2 different examples of how it could work. the "wobble" should be much smaller and closer around the sun. I used the 320x320 area around the sun, should be enough for the animation frame.

I know there are better ways to do this, I just used the "ocean waves" filter and the variation "glass" in the 2. example and after this some "gaussian blurring"
Imagine this animated, just small, slightly "wobble" or "ripple" around the sun like many little waves.

Here, it is really hard to see but in this Level of Sonic 3 the entire Background (and foreground) ripples because of the heat in the desert. Looks much better ingame of course:

 

[Masterfurbix]

I see. that looks like it's more on the programming side, rather than the graphics, I'm not quite sure how to pull something like that off.

I have another idea, I'll throw something together in a second.

EDIT: yeah, I don't think it's going to happen on my end, I've tried rippling, displacement mapping, shear filtering, liquefying, nothing really works for a heat wave effect.

 

[PokeParadox]

I see. that looks like it's more on the programming side, rather than the graphics, I'm not quite sure how to pull something like that off.

I have another idea, I'll throw something together in a second.

EDIT: yeah, I don't think it's going to happen on my end, I've tried rippling, displacement mapping, shear filtering, liquefying, nothing really works for a heat wave effect.

Those effects in Sonic 3 are definitely a coder thing. Nice effect too! Currently not 100% sure on specifics on how to do it though.

 

[bzar]

Those effects in Sonic 3 are definitely a coder thing. Nice effect too! Currently not 100% sure on specifics on how to do it though.

Isn't that just offsetting parallax layer rows horizontally? Something like offset = MAX_OFFSET * sin((rowNumber + i) % 10 * 2*PI/10), where i is something like frameNumber%10. This transformation is done at blitting phase.

 

[fusion_power]

I see. that looks like it's more on the programming side, rather than the graphics, I'm not quite sure how to pull something like that off.

I have another idea, I'll throw something together in a second.

EDIT: yeah, I don't think it's going to happen on my end, I've tried rippling, displacement mapping, shear filtering, liquefying, nothing really works for a heat wave effect.

I think, it is easy to animate the Sun, 4 or 5 frames should be more than enough to make some continuing ripple around the sun. Sadly, I have no animation-program that I could use. And I doubt there is one simple enough to make some quick 5-Minute mockups with.

Those effects in Sonic 3 are definitely a coder thing. Nice effect too! Currently not 100% sure on specifics on how to do it though.

I know. They used the linescroll-skills of the MegaDrive but it was just an Example of how I imagine to animate the sun. I don't want the entire level with such an heat effect. ^^" I'm sure it is possible with a simple animation just for the sun itself.

EDIT: nobody told me, that it IS possible to make animations straight within Photoshop. :lol: They put the "Image Ready" stuff straight into the main programm. Her a quick sun with 5 frames:

 

[MarkoeZ]

I really like the idea, and i'll try how it looks. But i think then the whole background should ripple (sun and sky layer). And since animating that would take too much mb's for an effect, i'd have to find a software way. Tips anyone? (going to look into that linescroll thing)

 

[fusion_power]

I really like the idea, and i'll try how it looks. But i think then the whole background should ripple (sun and sky layer). And since animating that would take too much mb's for an effect, i'd have to find a software way. Tips anyone? (going to look into that linescroll thing)

Well, if the Megadrive was able to do such effects without performance loss, the Pandora should be able to do so with no Problems I think.
All I know is that in linescroll, the lines of the screen have different "timings" so each line can scroll with another speed. Very often used for amazing Parallax effects.
I've found a document about emulation programming. At page 121 or so there are some informations of how the Megadrive generates the image.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/94546/Study-of-the-techniques-for-emulation-programming-by-Victor-Moya-del-Barrio
Parallax Raster effect:
http://www.search.com/reference/Parallax_scrolling#The_raster_method

Well, I would be happy enough with just an animated sun. Because your game don't use a tile-based Engine, animating the entire background as one picture would be to much like you mentioned. ^^"
But of course, at first the foreground is more important. I think there could be more than just some thin platforms, maybe also some ancient pillars like in the Original Games?

 

[MarkoeZ]

small update: doing boring but necessary stuff. adding more level configuration to the level editor for instance (level goals/graphic set/time). Also basic code distinction between "official" game levels, and user made ones (although, if approved by the level designers, early user made ones could easily end up in the final game ; )
Level editor is still pretty raw, but fully functional now.

 

[Jourdy288]

small update: doing boring but necessary stuff. adding more level configuration to the level editor for instance (level goals/graphic set/time). Also basic code distinction between "official" game levels, and user made ones (although, if approved by the level designers, early user made ones could easily end up in the final game ; )
Level editor is still pretty raw, but fully functional now.

Hmm, I'll have to look at that editor ;-)
Thanks for the update.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Don't get over excited No windows build yet.

The level editor does not have to be super polished with graphics, fonts or that kind of stuff yet, but i'm still working on some limiters, sensible positioning of the buttons, and more of that stuff before public release. (edited in)